


homecoming

by thefudge



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Dark Magic, Expression!Bonnie, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Parent/Child Incest, circa season 4, ost: doja cat - say so (im a fkin sociopath who listened to this while writing soooooo)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: Now, he’s intent on becoming flesh. Rudy/Bonnie
Relationships: Bonnie Bennett/Rudy Hopkins, Rudy Hopkins/Bonnie Bennett
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> *slams this cursed vehicle into your gated community* oh you thought you were safe? 
> 
> (anyway, i tweaked rudy's history with bonnie a little bit.)

Sometimes I said to myself, this is an enchantment, and I must strive against it. My father is blinded by some malignant vision which I must remove.

 _mathilda_ , mary shelley

***

At night, when she catches herself in the mirror, the blood beneath the cheek looks black.

Little snakes hatching. She thinks it’s only a dream.

And then, her father returns.

His voice sounds like no other voice she knows. It doesn’t sound like anything.

“I want you home this instant. End of discussion.”

Bonnie grips the phone in her hand until her knuckles whiten. She wants to splinter the metal. She wants to see cracks. Sparks.

Instead, she flings her magic against the empty locker. The hinges groan and tremble.

She never used to be so angry.

“You never used to be so angry,” her father told her the other night when he heard her slamming doors in her wake. Bonnie muttered something about having a “bad day at school” and locked herself in her room. 

She wishes he would leave. She’s used to living on her own. His presence in the house makes it hard to breathe. Ever since he returned to town and claimed his duties as father, she has felt tethered to a sinking ship.

Rudy Hopkins is a stranger to her. There’s no other word for it.

For a long time, she thought of him as a ghost, coming in and out of her life at particular moments, leaving faint traces in his wake. She liked that ghost, as long as it remained otherworldly.

Now, he’s intent on becoming flesh.

She opens the front door quietly, hopes to evade him.

“Come here for a moment, Bonnie.”

Rudy is calling her from his office. It used to be her grandmother’s study. There’s a lingering, choking scent of nutmeg and thyme.

Bonnie stands in the doorway, arms folded. The intruder is sitting at her grandmother’s desk.

“Yes?”

Rudy holds up a dog-eared Grimoire. “I found this in your room, along with various other arcana.”

Bonnie’s anger, just recently tempered, flares up.

“You searched my room? You went through _my_ things?”

“I reserve the right to intervene when I feel you’re making harmful choices.” His voice is polite and firm, coolly detached. As if he were speaking to his constituents.

Bonnie’s jaw locks. “You have no right to do this. I’ve proven that I can take care of myself.”

“No, you haven’t,” he replies, unmoved. “You have put yourself in extremely dangerous situations because no one tried to stop you. Well, _I_ am stopping you. Until the end of the year you will focus on schoolwork. I intend for you to graduate with top honors. Magic can wait. In fact, magic _should_ wait.”

With each word out of his mouth, Bonnie feels the tether pulling her down below. Her fingers itch for release. Magic storms the air like old dust. “I can’t believe you did this. Give me back my Grimoire.”

“No.”

Bonnie steps forward. “I’m not asking, Dad. I’ll handle school. But I need my magic.” 

“You can take a break for a few months. It won’t kill you, sweetheart. Quite the opposite.”

It’s the soft “sweetheart” that makes her hurl the papers from his desk in a wave of angry magic. The paperweight falls to the floor with a thud, along with his phone and car keys. His chair is pushed up against the wall along with him.

Rudy feels the full force of it. He swallows a breath. He must not show fear. He has lived – or tried to live – with Abby Bennett. He knows a thing or two about Bennett witches. And this is his daughter. He held her in his arms, once, when she was too small to remember.

He rises delicately from his chair and sets his fist down on the desk. “ _Enough_!”

Bonnie flinches. Not from the strength of the impact, but rather from the quiet way his bones collide with wood.

“I won’t argue with you. Your arsenal will be locked away for the time being. You will go to your room and only come down for dinner when I call you. You will reflect on what I said. And – and you will start on your homework.”

Bonnie feels old laughter bubbling in her throat, Emily’s laughter. The pulse of a foreign heart.

His eyes are hard, but his shoulders give in a little. “I only want what’s best for you. You have to believe that.”

She doesn’t. She has smelled his fear, despite his best efforts.

“You only want what’s best for you,” she replies.

He will never understand her gift. If she is disappointed, she does not let it show.

She turns away, nursing her small hatred.

Is it hatred? Has it come this far in a matter of days?

She never had the chance to love her father. He always fled before she could manage it. Always on the road, finding reasons to delay, because her grandmother could not abide his presence and he was more comfortable sending her postcards.

But does she _hate_ him?

No, and yet the feeling is so _strong_ \- amplified to a strange, unbearable pitch.

Bonnie jolts from the bed. She quickly gropes the lining of her mattress. She hopes her father did not find the stash.

She breathes a sigh of relief when the small bottle rubs against her thumb.

Shane told her to take a few sips whenever the magic felt difficult to control.

She uncorks the bottle and takes more than a few sips.

At dinner she eats quietly, resentment in every bite.

His cooking is bad, but edible. Some distant part of her appreciates the effort, but another more familiar part thinks all of this is a waste.

Rudy pretends to read the paper instead of keeping tabs on her.

“Have you heard from Mom?” she asks suddenly, eyes on her plate.

“I have not.”

“She’s a vampire now. I thought maybe she dropped you a note, letting you know.”

Rudy inhales sharply. “That’s – that’s none of my business.”

Bonnie scoffs. “Right. The woman you once loved now drinks the blood of innocents, but that’s none of your business.”

“I doubt your mother would do that–”

“I _don’t_.”

Rudy finally looks at her. “I hate that this is the world we live – the world _you_ live in, Bonnie. But all I can do is make sure _you_ do not go down that path.”

Bonnie smiles, a smile unlike herself. “That’s just the thing. I have the power to save Mom, to find a cure. But you think schoolwork is more important.”

“I think _you_ are more important.”

Bonnie grips the knife at her side. “Mom never wanted to be a vampire. I did not choose to be a witch, but here we are. Whether I’m important or not, I have a job to do.”

Rudy stares at the knife in her hand. Again, he forces himself to remain calm. “Don’t you find it strange that you react so violently to the notion that you _matter_? That your life is worth something?”

Bonnie runs her finger down the side of the blade. “Why are you saying this now? You didn’t think I mattered all these years.”

Rudy’s eyes are filled with sadness. She tries not to lose herself in that fathomless regret.

“I always thought you mattered,” he rasps, “but I was not very good at showing it. I want you to let me try now.”

Blood wells against her thumb. The knife has cut into skin. 

Rudy grabs her hand. “Honey, be careful.”

The touch is soft and calloused, years of experience stored in the flesh. His fingers trace her wrist. He presses a napkin to her thumb.

Bonnie shivers, blood recognizing blood.

Rudy lifts her hand to his mouth and presses a quick kiss to her knuckles.

It’s supposed to reassure her of his love.

But it feels like taming a cat in the dark.

He coughs, lets go of her hand.

“I’ll go grab some rubbing alcohol.”

Bonnie puts the bloody thumb in her mouth for a moment. It tastes like rust and oranges.

“No, look.”

She wipes the saliva off her thumb and stares at the broken flesh. She closes her eyes.

The skin sutures before his eyes, black thread working under the flesh. There’s only a faint mark left behind.

“I’ll get better at it,” she says, rubbing at the mark. “One day, it’ll be flawless.”

Rudy’s mouth trembles slightly. He wants to ask about the black thread, but he doesn’t dare.

“It doesn’t have to be –” he starts. He closes his mouth. Starts again. “Your priorities right now are school and self-care. I don’t want you expending your energy on anything else.”

“This _is_ self-care,” Bonnie grits. “But fine.”

She picks up the knife and slices the pad of her thumb again.

It happens so quickly he barely has time to react.

“Go fetch the alcohol,” she drawls. “I’ll wait.”

Blood is spilling on the table.

Bonnie stares at him, smiling that smile again – unlike herself.

Rudy clenches his jaw.

“Stay here.”

When he returns with the bottle, she has already stolen to her room.

He sits down at the kitchen table and stares at the few droplets of blood left behind.

His daughter is a stranger.

They go to church together for the first time, on his insistence. Bonnie comes down the stairs wearing the dress she wore at her grandmother’s funeral. 

Rudy frowns. “Don’t you think that’s a little ghoulish?”

Bonnie eyes him with amusement. “Should I grab my jean shorts and halter top?”

Her father lifts an eyebrow. “You don’t wear jean shorts or halter tops.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do,” he says and his words are warm and wry, filling in the gaps of his absence.

Bonnie chafes against it. “I’m not changing.”

“I suppose it’ll have to do,” he says, nodding his head, mildly aggrieved.

Everything is mild with him.

She suddenly has the strange, unquenchable urge to zip down her dress before him. To let it pool at her feet and step out of the black folds and shock him.

Bonnie scratches the back of her neck. She doesn’t know why her head is filled with these images, lately.

She walks past him through the doorway and doesn’t look back.

They sit next to each other in the front pew.

Rudy shares his hymn book with her.

Bonnie has to lean in close to read the small print. But she doesn’t really read. She inhales his smell – crisp linen, hiding a delicate musk, like deer fallen on the roadside, covered by leaves.

She watches his mouth as he sings the words. There’s something so vulnerable about a father’s mouth, she thinks. The way it tries to articulate. The darkness that becomes white with age. His teeth like fading porcelain. His mouth on her knuckles.

A stranger.

She pretends to sing too, but her mind is elsewhere. She doesn’t know exactly where it goes.

Caroline calls her in the evening, asking her to come over.

“It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages. We have to talk about prom. And we still have to deal with Elena… She hasn’t improved at all. Stefan had to stop her from feeding on half the cheerleading team.”

Bonnie hears the words and understands the urgency. She misses her friends. It feels like she’s always missing them. Missing something. Prom. Elena. Cheerleaders. Blood.

Vampires without humanity.

She pauses. “Let me check with my dad.”

Bonnie puts down the phone and walks towards the landing.

“Dad?”

“In here,” he calls from his office. It still galls her that he won’t find another room. That he insists on trespassing. 

“Caroline wants me to come over.”

“It’s after 8 pm, so I’d rather you didn’t,” he shoots back. 

Bonnie takes a few steps down the stairs. Old wood creaks.

“It’s _Caroline_. You know, Liz’s daughter? You can’t possibly think she’s a bad influence.”

“I know. _You’re_ the bad influence,” Rudy replies with a smile in his voice. “Go back to your room, please.”

Bonnie huffs, but it’s only for show.

She patters back to her room. She closes the door and sits on the edge of her bed.

“Bonnie?” Caroline calls out from the phone.

Bonnie sits with her hands between her thighs. Toes curl against the soft carpet. She doesn’t know why she feels gratified. It must have been the “please”. The way he said it; powerless to stop her, yet completely in control.

“Sorry, Care,” she says in the phone with a strange smile, “Dad is being difficult.”

Ultimately, you don’t hate your father.

You just want him to react.

Respond.

You want him to stop being a father for a moment.

To be human in a painful, childless way.

To have never birthed you.

She sweats throughout the night and claws at her sheets and bites into her pillow blindly. A feral witch without a familiar.

Expression is lightning without sky or ground, blood energy zigzagging through her without an object to possess or burn. She craves to find her prey.

Children prey on parents until they are no longer parents.

She careens out of bed, as if she were being jostled at sea. 

Black butterflies flap beneath the skin.

Bonnie scratches the side of her throat as she shuffles down the hallway.

He hasn’t locked the bedroom.

She creeps in, trying to see him in the dark. She can’t remember the last time she was here.

Rudy wakes gradually.

“Bonnie?”

She’s shivering now.

She crawls in bed next to him, feverish.

“I can’t – I can’t sleep. I’m scared.”

Rudy pulls off the covers. The white of his eyes shimmers in distress. He makes room for her next to him. “Come here. Why are you scared?”

“The things in my head,” she whispers, burrowing into his chest. “Please – just – hold me – daddy.”

Rudy stills for a moment. The term of endearment doesn’t sound right in her mouth. Doesn’t sound right at all.

His arms come around her, pulling her close.

Bonnie clings to him.

“It’s gonna be all right. I’m here,” he speaks into her hair. She is hot and damp and he is cool and dry and she savors it, makes a sound at the back of her throat that sounds like homecoming – and something else.

Rudy strokes the ridges of her spine slowly, trying to edge her towards sleep.

But her heart beats too fast against him. 

She slowly starts moving to the rhythm of his hand on her back, grinding against him, as if overcome by spasms.

Rudy puts a hand to her forehead. She’s burning up.

“Maybe we should call a doctor.”

Her eyes almost have no whites.

A stranger.

She smiles up at him.

Her hands roam his chest, exploring, tugging at his wife beater. She fits her body against his until there is no more space. She sneaks one leg between his legs.

Rudy seizes her wrist. “Bonnie –”

“Hm?”

“What are you doing?”

“You said you wanted to make me feel important.” Her voice is distant, dreamlike.

He yanks her wrist harder, making her hiss. He tries to lift her off him. He has to put his hand on her waist. She’s too warm.

“Not like this,” he rasps.

“You’re still afraid of me,” she coos in the dark, latching onto him like a hungry leech.

“Bonnie, stop –”

She wrestles against him and tears at his chest with fingers that have turned into claws. Rudy clasps her to him, flips them over. He pins her against the mattress with his body, trying to curb the violence.

“Bonnie, look at me,” he pants, feeling the sharpness of her sting. “Look at me. Snap out of it!”

Emily’s laughter comes out of her mouth again, and he knows it’s not his daughter, yet he also senses that his daughter is an inextricable part of it.

He cradles her face, trying to make her focus on him.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks her, almost hoping that she doesn’t.

Bonnie arches into him and drags her foot against his ankle, trying to anchor herself. “You’re a stranger.”

Dark threads, water snakes, constellations under her skin - blacker than night. 

She lifts her head and her mouth presses against his mouth, because there is nowhere else to go.

Rudy tastes her tongue on his lower lip before he wrenches his head away.

Too slow.

In that horrified split-second he can’t help but think of Abby and how similar she used to taste. 

Bonnie grips the sides of his face with strength that only magic can lend. Sharp nails dig into the hollows of his eyes, threatening to blind him.

Fear makes him lower his head submissively, afraid of losing something beyond eyesight. His forehead is pressed against her chest and her hands do not release him. He is breathing into her flimsy T-shirt, making the fabric lift. Bonnie shifts to meet him and his lips are suddenly on the small rise of her breast, only cotton between his mouth and bare skin, and his throat is filled with ash as he swallows the grit, and he can’t find the words to wake her.

“Please…I need you to…” she murmurs almost shyly, hand on his head, urging him to do something she cannot articulate. “It won’t go away if you don’t.”

_What won’t go away?_

Rudy shudders, eyes closed against the sickly sweet nightmare. He kisses the side of her breast over the fabric lovingly, terrified of himself and her. He knows this won’t help, but maybe it will.

Bonnie runs a tender hand down the back of his neck, and he kisses the shirt again, burying his nose in it. He trails chaste kisses to her belly where there is a strip of exposed flesh that trembles, waiting for his mouth. And wretchedly, he wants to oblige her, he wants to help her help himself. He wants to make her less of a stranger. If he tastes his daughter’s skin, she will _be_ his daughter and she will _stop_.

His mouth ghosts over it, lips snag gently and kiss the spot below her bellybutton. It sends a jolt through him.

Bonnie moans recklessly, pouring magic into his mouth, and he knows – he _knows_ he made a mistake which no amount of shame or regret can undo. He shouldn’t have followed her here.

She wants more.

He lifts his head.

Her eyes are a slumbering void. 

“How can I – how can I –” he chokes, unable to finish. How can he save her? How can he suck the poison running through her veins when, for all he knows, it came from him? Bennett witches make themselves. They never needed him. He interfered. He gave his body and blood to something he did not understand. He shouldn’t have spoiled the bloodline. Sheila could never forgive him, had never let him forget.

But if he cannot cure her, how can he – how can he –

_How can I make it stop hurting?_

_How can I make it feel good?_

Bonnie reads his distress in the deep furrows of his face. 

She smiles. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll show you.”

Expression means riding the wave.

Shane told her to let it unfurl. Let it express whatever it needs to express.

She straddles him, savoring the panic in his eyes, the immobility of the iris.

He can’t leave her anymore. He is rooted to the spot. Maybe he never left.

She takes his hand. It weighs so little. She guides his fingers inside her underwear. It’s easy.

Rudy hisses at the contact like a wounded animal. She knows she’s burning up, burning his fingers to the bone, and she savors that too.

She grips his wrist, guiding his hand. But she doesn’t need to. Rudy’s eyes are stark and disbelieving, even as he runs his thumb against her the way she wants him to.

She fucks herself on his fingers.

He lets her. 

He does not even pretend not to let her.

Their movements are quick and ugly. When she comes, she buries the scream in the crook of his neck. He feels her pulsing against his knuckles, fingers coated in her, and he loses himself in the feeling of death, dying slowly –

“ _Fuck, Bonnie_ –” he expels harshly.

He sounds like no one she knows. He doesn’t sound like anything at all.

In the harsh light of dawn, the little black snakes retreat.

Her skin is polished wood. She is pristine, asleep next to him, head turned sideways, body still curled towards him, sunflower looking for sun.

Rudy stares at the ceiling.

After a while, he realizes she cannot wake up here.

He grabs her shoulder gently, reluctant to put his hand on her, afraid of what that’ll do to him in the daylight.

He carries her to her room, staring only at whatever is beyond his line of vision.

Bonnie plops down in her seat with a sigh.

She holds her head in her hands.

“God, my head’s killing me. Why didn’t you wake me?”

Rudy stands with his back to her. He pours coffee steadily.

“I thought I should let you rest.”

Bonnie rubs her eyes. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Rudy stills.

“Why?”

“It felt like I was talking in my sleep. I thought I saw you in the doorway.”

An imperceptible shudder travels down his spine.

“I think it was your magic acting up, sweetheart. Maybe – maybe I shouldn’t have locked away your Grimoire.”

Bonnie perks up instantly. “ _Really_?”

He doesn’t turn to look at her, but he knows her eyes must be brimming with hope.

“Really.”

He packed a suitcase earlier. Then unpacked it.

It’s still sitting at the foot of his bed. 

“Thank you. It – it means a lot that you trust me,” she says, stumbling on the words, as if they’re brand new.

He still avoids looking at her as he brings the bowl of porridge and the cup of coffee to the table.

Bonnie takes the coffee first, grateful. She smiles up at him.

Rudy meets her gaze.

Family is not afraid to speak the ugly truth. Family can’t be strangers.

And yet, they are both.

He can’t leave her.

He can't stay.

He promised her he wouldn't let her walk down this path. He promised to keep her safe. Even from himself. 

Maybe he doesn’t have to leave. Not right away.

Not right now.

He sits down, watches her eat. What he wants more than anything in the world is to spend every morning watching her eat. What he absolutely cannot do is spend every morning watching her eat.

He has to look away from her mouth.

She kissed him a second time after she came on his fingers, pecked him on the lips sloppily, a sort of drunken “ _thank you, daddy_ ”, and he leaned forward and kissed her fully, smearing her pretty lips, wanting to dig his pit so deep that he couldn’t climb out anymore. His wife had never made him dig so deep.

Bonnie pushes the bowl away.

“That wasn’t half bad,” she lets him know. His cooking has improved.

Rudy smiles.

He takes hold of her hand, brings the knuckles to his lips.

The gesture hurts, even like this.

He realizes he doesn’t know anything about Bennett witches, after all.

Never has. 

**Author's Note:**

> no, we don't accept refunds byeeeeee


End file.
